Because he was tired of eating gruel

The most popular phrase in our house these days (besides “No” and “Listen Raffi”) is “Eli do it.” He has all of a sudden become very independent and wants to do EVERYTHING himself, especially if it is something he sees mommy and daddy doing. Today, he got a piece of cheese out of the fridge. He tried so hard to get the plastic off himself, but eventually gave it to me to help him. I took it off only part of the way so that he could learn how to do it himself. He grabbed the partially unwrapped piece of cheese and ran into the living room. A minute later I heard him coughing, at which point I realized that I sent my toddler off with a plastic sheet and right now he could be holding it over his nose and suffocating. Luckily this was not the case. The cheese was sitting on the coffee table with several bites taken out of it, still half-wrapped in the plastic… which also had several bites taken out of it. In fact, plastic has become part of his daily diet, because at least once a day I will find him sitting in front of the open fridge door (after just 3 weeks, he figured out how to undo the childproof lock) trying to bite his way though a piece of plastic wrapped Kraft cheese or a cheese stick. And he usually succeeds in getting at least one bite. I really don’t think that plastic is on the FDA food pyramid.